The Gardener's Atlas: The Origins, Discovery and Cultivation of the World's Most Popular Garden Plants - Hardcover

Grimshaw, Dr. John

9781552092262: The Gardener's Atlas: The Origins, Discovery and Cultivation of the World's Most Popular Garden Plants

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1552092267 ISBN 13: 9781552092262

Publisher: Firefly Books, 2003

The flowering plants in your garden, and their variety of color and form, are the result of hundreds of years of tradition, science, skill and intrepid exploration. They may be native plants carefully selected to provide larger blooms or a greater color range, exotic species with origins in far-distant lands, or cultivars which have been painstakingly bred to conform to an ideal of shape and form.

The Gardener's Atlas explores the histories of many of the world's most popular cultivated plants and reveals how and where they grew in the wild. It relates extraordinary and uplifting tales of their discovery in some of the remotest regions on earth -- tales of determination and perseverance, of barter and exchange, and of international friendship struck up between enthusiastic horticulturists from the 1500s onward.

There are insights into how plants that are now simply decorative were once used for medicinal or cosmetic purposes, for food or ritual, and into how they earned their common or Latin names. This is a book which cannot fail to enrich your gardening experience.

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About the Author:

Dr. John Grimshaw has contributed to a number of prestigious horticultural magazines and books. He is a committee member of the U.S., U.K., and Scottish Rock Garden Societies.

Dr. Bobby Ward is co-editor of A Garden of One's Own, a collection of the garden writings of Elizabeth Lawrence and co-author of A Contemplation Upon Flowers: Garden Plants in Myth and Literatures.

Introduction

Every garden, however small, contains plants with a past. Learning their stories adds richness to the gardening experience.

Over 4,000 years of tradition, science, and art are at the disposal of today's gardeners. The plants in your garden may be native stock, exotics with origins on the other side of the world, or cultivars that are the product of centuries of careful attention by gardeners who have selected better clones from wild populations, or who have laboriously bred them to conform to their ideal of perfection. This book tells the story of these plants, and of gardens and gardeners from the earliest records to the present day. The labors of plant hunters and the efforts of plant breeders have made available plants suited to every situation, and even a small plot can grow some plant with a fascinating history to tell.

Although in most urbanized countries the size of gardens is shrinking, gardeners can still draw inspiration from the past, adapting traditions to create their own miniature paradise. The great paterres (formal, intricately patterned flowerbeds) of the palace of Versailles may be too large for your plot, and the simple beauty of the gardens of the Alhambra may be out of place in suburbia. But the imaginative gardener can learn from both. Flowers, or even vegetables, can be attractively grown in box-edged, parterre-like beds, while a pool and miniature fountain can create the ambience of a Moorish garden.

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